Facebook celebrates birthday
Facebook never forgets a birthday.
And the social networking site's daily reminders, listed on the upper right hand side of every users' home page mean 150 million people worldwide don't either.
It's just one of the features of the site, which has become a phenomenon that has captured the hearts and minds of Generation Y.
On Wednesday, the social networking giant celebrated its own birthday.
"Building and moving quickly for five years hasn't been easy, and we aren't finished," said creator Mark Zuckerberg in a Facebook blog that was posted to the site Tuesday afternoon, entitled "Facebook's 5th Birthday."
"The challenge motivates us to keep innovating and pushing technical boundaries to produce better ways to share information," he said.
Along with Web sites such as MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter, Facebook has also been credited with bringing social networking into the mainstream, with politicians, businesses and celebrities jumping on the bandwagon.
All the while, the site continues to grow. But, in the next five years, will Facebook remain to be the cultural force it is today?
"In five years - in terms of Internet terms - that's a long ways to predict," said John Rathje, director of application development and support for the Office of Information Technology - and a Facebook user.
Some predict that Facebook will go the way of MySpace, which has tanked in popularity compared to Facebook in the last several years.
"MySpace lost popularity because it failed to appeal to users across generation gaps," said Mount Pleasant senior Justin Hubbard, an information technology student. "It sounds crazy, but it's complicated in its simplicity, and the older generations just choose not to deal with it."
Rathje acknowledged that there's always something new that comes along, but "there is no reason Facebook will lose popularity," he said. "They seem to be quite sensitive to what their user base is interested in."
Facebook has become a household name. It has crossed the threshold of being so widely trafficked that it has become a routine aide to social interaction.
The question of whether or not a person has a Facebook is largely irrelevant these days. Instead, the better question is, 'when was the last time you logged on?'
But there are still those who refuse to make an account.
Oleg Vhukov, a Rochester Hills sophomore, said he does not have and will never have a Facebook account.
"I never really got into that online stuff. I never got a MySpace or anything like that. I'm more of a social person in real life," Vhukov said. "Whenever I see someone on a computer, I'd say 90 percent of the time they're on (Facebook). They're wasting too much time on it."
Vhukov has grown used to the typical reaction of surprise when people learn that he is not on the site and often has people offer to make an account for him, but he still refuses.
"They just wonder why (I don't) and I say 'I don't know, I just don't," he said. "Girls are always trying to make one for me, but I've never gone on in my life. They always try to and I just say 'no thanks.'"
On the flip side, China Township freshman Jordan Jensen has a collection of 19 applications that will never stop growing.
"A lot of the times, it's people that invite me to them or I'm bored and go looking for them," she said. "I'll get an invite and say 'oh, that looks fun."
Two of her favorites are MyFarm, a program that involves maintaining crops and raising animals, and iLike, a music player that adds music to a user's Facebook.
Photos, games and an endless list of applications are all perks to the Web site, but not the key reason why Jensen and billions log in everyday.
"You can get an inside look at what people are up to. You can connect with people in a different way and I can keep up with my family."
studentlife@cm-life.com
